I look up from my glass with its splash of nicotine coloured whisky and glance at my super sleek black digital watch. It shows 3:50 which tells me the office clock is wrong by a good two minutes. You can’t beat digitals for accuracy. I look through my office window at the girls in the typing pool and wonder about making a move on Janet. She’ll be impressed with my BMW and my Seiko Memo Diary UC-3000, who wouldn’t be? Although maybe she’ll worry that it’s the start of the end of the way things are, of typing pools and of secretaries and of office flings. Nah, those days will never end. Hell, it’s 1985 for pity’s sake, life can’t get much more efficient and the economy will grow forever. And what do people think, that I’m going to type my own memo’s and send them to the boys in marketing myself? Ha!

I put my cigarette out in the heavy marble ashtray on my desk and remember that I’ve only got a couple left in the packet. I casually undo my watch and take it off, admiring the Seiko logo on the adjustable black metal clasp that perfectly matches the bracelet. Taking the small modern keyboard out of my pocket, I put the watch in its cradle and press the ‘Transmit’ button then press ‘Memo’ on the keyboard. “Buy cigs” I type, before adding “Janet’s brand.” Oh yes, haven’t I mentioned? This is much more than just a watch. Seiko called it a Wrist Information System in that advert. I call it WIS for short, which will now forever be associated with owners of cool digital watches. I put the watch back in time mode and put it back on, comfortable in the knowledge that my memo is safely stored, and pocket the keyboard. I expect that by the year 2000 everybody will wear digital watches. They’re so much better than those old-fashioned ones with hands and so much easier to tell the time on. And the smart boys like me will have the clever little buggers that can take memos and phone numbers and organise your diary too.

Take this Seiko Memo Diary UC-3000 for instance. It’s top notch Japanese fare from those clever boys at Seiko. Not only is it a cool looking slick black digital watch, it comes with a keyboard that is small enough to fit in my suit pocket. Put the two together and you have enough memory to store literally hundreds of words of text and numbers. Nobody will ever need more than that. It has a setting for memos and addresses and a different one for schedule management, and you can get the scheduler to set off your alarm to remind you at the time. Genius! Unbelievably, it does it all using electro-magnetic pulses, no need for any wires. Incredible isn’t it, moving words and numbers about without wires! Who knows, maybe one day I won’t even need my Filofax anymore. The WIS can store those strange characters too, like the gate sign # and the little a with a half circle round it @ that nobody knows what it’s for. Not that anybody is ever likely to need those though. I’ve even heard that some nerds have managed to make a little game that runs on it. I’d like to find out how to do that but I’m not sure where to look, it’s not like they advertise in the Yellow Pages or have the instructions at the library. It’s not like there’s some central repository of all this sort of stuff, that’s a sci-fi fantasy.

You can get some pretty big printer things from Epson too that you can plug this puppy into. Maybe I could buy one of those with the bonus from the Jackson deal. That’d be sure to impress Janet. Imagine that, using your watch to print a memo! Like me, my watch is cool and smart. It has a big squared black case, and four functional buttons. Janet called it my “Smart Watch” the other day but that name will never catch on. We were with the young office boy, Jony Ive, and though I laughed he had a strange look in his eye. He’s a weird one, no doubt he’ll never make anything of himself. Not like me, with my WIS and Janet at my side.